Category: Artists

Eugène Delacroix stood at a pivotal turning point in the history of Western art. He was arguably the last great painter of the tradition shaped by Renaissance humanism; the final master to approach myth, religion, allegory, literature, and history with complete confidence that these subjects remained worthy of the grandest artistic treatment. While the generations…

The World of Matisse: 1869–1954 (1969) by longtime New York Times art critic John Russell was one of the final volumes published in the landmark Time-Life World of Art series. Appearing just fifteen years after Matisse’s death, it was written at a time when both the artist’s reputation and his place in the history of…

John Singleton Copley stands as the foremost American artist of the eighteenth century. At a time when Americans were widely regarded in Europe as provincial brutes, he nonetheless earned an honored place among the leading artists of the continent. His life was divided almost evenly between two worlds: the first thirty-seven years in Boston, and…

The Sun King, Louis XIV, died in 1715 after 70 years on the throne. In partnership with his aide Jean-Baptiste Colbert, he set out to establish royal control over all aspects of life. Rigid regulations and etiquette dominated all aspects of French life in the late seventeenth century, including art. The Royal Academy of Painting…

Born the son of a Nuremberg goldsmith, Albrecht Dürer learned the demanding art of engraving with a burin at an early age, a discipline that trained both his hand and his eye. His talent was quickly recognized, and he was apprenticed to the painter Michael Wolgemut, who would become a second father and introduce him…

Titian – born Tiziano Vecellio in a small village in the Dolomites northeast of Venice – was the most prominent, versatile, and long-lived of all sixteenth-century Venetian artists. He arrived in Venice in 1497 as a nine-year-old apprentice, when the city was still at the height of its economic and cultural power and its art…

Before Giotto, art had been largely decorative or dogmatic; he revealed that it could also be a shared human experience – something to look at rather than look up to. He infused his paintings with a newfound sense of humanity, setting his figures in natural, emotionally resonant scenes. Inspired by the philosophy of the Franciscans,…